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Intel 'Smithfield'

Smithfield is Intel's first attempt in creating a dual-core processor. Because AMD already designed the Athlon 64 to incorporate a second core (and thus was ahead on Intel) Intel had to rush to finish the Pentium D 'Smithfield'.

In short the Pentium D is nothing more than two Pentium 4 'Prescott' dies merged together into one single 'die'. On the right you see a 'die-shot' of the Smithfield. Compare it with the Prescott and see that it is practically equal, apart from color differences.

Since Smithfield is nothing more than a dual Pentium 4, it performs just equal to a Pentium 4 if one core is utilized. Whenever the second core can be used it starts to perform a lot better, even despite the fact that two cores have to share one FSB (front-side-bus).

Smithfield teased the thermal limits of the socket 775 motherboards. Especially the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (Smithfield running at 3.2GHz) put a really high load on voltage regulators and needed adequate cooling. Back in the day Tom's Hardware ran a stress-test (24/7 running of the systems) and many socket 775 motherboards burned out. Nevertheless Intel managed to control the power consumption quite well, considering the Smithfield is actually a double Prescott!

Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8 GHz) 'QDOM'

The Pentium D 820 was officially released on May 26, 2005. This engineering sample dates back to Dec 20, 2004 which makes it an early sample. 2004 was about single-core Pentium 4's (still) at 3GHz+ and Athlon's in the 3500+ ballpark.

I tested this sample for a short amount of time and haven't ran into any issues. Even the heat dissipation isn't that bad compared to the early Pentium 4 'Prescott'. > Read more

Intel Pentium D 840 (3.2 GHz) 'QDDS'

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Intel Pentium D 830 (3 GHz) 'QDDZ'

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Intel Pentium D 840 (3.2 GHz) 'QDDS'

This engineering samples dates back to the 45th week of 2004. That is about 9 months after the release of the single-core 90nm Prescott and about 6 months before the dual-core 90nm Smithfield was officially released. Despite being an early sample this dual-core chip had no issues at all in my ASUS P5P800SE to run benchmarks. Even at 3.2 GHz it runs fine.

On the heatspreader someone carved C5-I1W1M. I've been told that this is a marking a seller in China made to identify his chips. > Read more

Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8 GHz) 'SL8CP'

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Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8 GHz) 'SL8CP'

The slowest Pentium D 820 when Intel first released the CPU. Later Intel released the Pentium D 805 at 2.66GHz with a lower FSB for budget dual-core systems.

Technically the Pentium D consists of two Pentium 4's merged into one 'die'. Intel had to come up quickly with a dual-core CPU since AMD was also busy with dual-core parts. Rumors are that Intel finished the Pentium D in just 9 months which is incredibly fast. At first I was sceptical about the Pentium D but it ran fairly well (at least, it ran just like two Pentium 4's would) without being a very hot running CPU. Remember that Smithfield is made at 90nm and is really two Prescott's underneath. Somehow Intel got better control of their production process and could control energy consumption/heat dissipation as well.

I have an engineering sample of the Pentium D 820 (see here) that is dated 51th week of 2004. That's about 5 months older than the official released version. > Read more

Intel Pentium D 830 (3 GHz) 'SL88S'

Just like this Pentium D 830 engineering sample but this time it's a regular production version. > Read more

Intel Pentium D 805 (2.66 GHz) 'SL8ZH'

The dual-core budget CPU of 2005. Intel sold this CPU for about 130 EUR while the AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (cheapest dual-core from AMD) sold for about 300 EUR. The X2 3800+ is faster but also twice as expensive. For budget systems (especially commercially) it was ideal to sell a dual-core PC ... imagine slogans like 2x2.66GHz = 5.33GHz! Easy selling .

Despite putting two cores on one 133MHz (QDR533) bus, the D805 performs quite well compared to the D820. > Read more

Intel Pentium D 830 (3 GHz) 'QEJB'

The first dual-core x86 desktop processor Intel released is the Pentium Extreme Edition 840. This CPU is technically identical to the Pentium D except that the Pentium Extreme Edition has hyper-threading technology enabled.

The normal Pentium D's were launched at May 26th of 2005. Just a little before AMD released their dual-core Athlon64 X2.

'Smithfield', codename of this CPU, was a job with haste. Intel needed to get a dual-core chip on the market as fast as possible. Due to this the Pentium D 800-series weren't optimized in terms of manufacturing. The Pentium D is dual-core but consists of two Pentium 4's that are sort of melted together. This causes higher production costs as the whole chip is worthless in case one core is not working properly. Intel fixed this issue in the newer 65nm Presler Pentium D's (900-series) which has two separate Pentium 4 cores. Now Intel is able to select any Pentium 4 core they want (the best samples for the Extreme Edition CPU's for example) and they don't have to waste one Pentium 4 core in case the other is damaged.

Energy consumption of this CPU is pretty high. Not surprising though because it's based on two 90mn Prescott Pentium 4's. > Read more